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With no Danny Granger so far this season, the Indiana Pacers have been a little bit
thinner than they originally expected. While Paul George has certainly emerged in
Granger’s absence, the Indiana bench is undeniably weaker with Lance Stephenson
having to fill a starting role. Despite the fact that much of the bench has been
underwhelming for most of the season, the Pacers still have some time to figure out
who can fit into the playoff rotation over the next couple of months.

Perhaps the biggest disappointment has been Gerald Green, who was signed this
offseason after providing a decent offensive spark for the Nets last season. In 31
games last year, Green averaged 18.4 points per 36 minutes on 48% shooting.
Combined with his 39% from beyond the arc, a PER of 15.8 and freakish athleticism,
it looked as if the Pacers were getting a nice bargain at $3.5 million per year for a
backup wing who can provide some punch off the bench.

Unfortunately for the Pacers, Gerald Green has regressed to resemble the player
who played his way out of the league following a short stint with Dallas in 2008-09.
In 43 games this season, his offensive rating is a horrendous 90, and his PER, at
7.6, is barely half of what you would expect out of an average player. He’s
converting on less than 35% of his shots from the field, and a laughable 28% from
three. Defensively, Green is grading slightly better than he normally does, but is
still probably one of the weaker links on a strong defensive team. By no means did
anyone expect Gerald Green to look like James Harden or Manu Ginobili off the
bench, but hardly anyone thought he would struggle this much. It has been painful.

After dealing Darren Collison, D.J. Augustin was brought into town to provide
support to George Hill at point guard. While he hasn’t been as disappointing as
Gerald Green, Augustin has been nothing special. Strangely enough, he is shooting
almost the exact same percentage from three as he is from the field overall, at
slightly over 33%. While 33% from the field is not good by any stretch, his
offensive rating (106) slightly outweighs his defensive rating (104) in the limited
16 minutes per game he’s playing. His 10.5 points and 5.2 assists per 36 minutes
don’t jump off the page, but he has been passable in the few minutes he gets.
Plus, considering how wretched he played at the beginning of the season, the
transition to mediocre has been a nice turn of events for Indiana. His size issues
may always present a challenge—as we saw when

Paul George fouled out against the Nets and George Hill was left helpless having
to defend the bigger Joe Johnson—but the Pacers can probably get away with
Augustin in the backup role when the playoffs come around. Although, if
something happens to George Hill, it will be time to panic.

On a more positive note, the Pacers have gotten decent work out of their two
primary backup big men, Tyler Hansbrough and Ian Mahinmi. Both have embodied
their starter equivalents in small ways; Hansbrough fills the rebounding void that
occurs when David West leaves the floor, and Mahinmi provides rim protection
when Roy Hibbert is on the bench. Both continue to be fairly limited offensively,
with Hansbrough’s offensive rebounding and uncanny knack for getting to the line
being the main offensive assets between the two of them. For his part, Mahinimi
doesn’t do anything particularly well, but he can do a little bit of everything: finish
at the rim, hit an open jumper and cut to the hoop. His bad hands continue to be
his largest drawback.

Basically, neither have been studs, but for a combined price of slightly over $7
million, Indiana has bigger concerns than two backup big men who have been
fairly productive...CONTINUE READING AT 8p9s

The Classical:

Jim Cavan: Why We Watch - Jason Kidd's Furrows

Jason Kidd plays basketball with a generosity and grace that seems to
elude him off the court.

Lucky—that’s what it was. And pretty ******* stupid, too, considering that
Kidd actually got away with not one, but twoleg-extending kicks on the shot—
a mid-air split so graceless and ridiculous it was a wonder that his body
managed to calibrate itself long enough to get off the shot—either of which
could’ve easily been called the other way. Neither was, and Kidd’s illusionist
gambit instead capped an 18-point, six-rebound, six-assist throwback
performance that helped the Knicks remain atop the Atlantic fold and kept his
onetime charges a byline below. The Nets haven't been quite the same since.

So it was lucky, and stupid, but also: it was heady, and it was savvy. Jason
Kidd has been at it hard enough, and has been paying his wary, laser-sighted
attention long enough, to identify the rare moments when rules take a back
seat to context. He understands because he’s been running these lacquer-
sheen stages since a good grip of his opponents were rocking diapers and
running head first into table corners. He also understands this because Jason
Kidd is blessed with a real-time genius that’s both wild and weirdly structured.
On the court, he thrives in the moment. Off it, those split seconds have
betrayed him. Or maybe it’s the other way around.

If the mercurial Melo is the Knicks’ undisputed MVP, then Jason Kidd has
become arguably their most indispensable player. Game after game, the
Bockers’ brow-furrowed maestro unfurls found money from his medic’s bag
of tricks—pinpointperimeter swings, sneaky baseline boards, pump fake
foul-draws seemingly owed to a magi’s spell. In and by so doing, he has
resurrected a career that last year had become something of a gilt
basketball hangover.

It took him more than a decade to figure out how to shoot, which at first
looked like a failure but wound up being perfectly timed to earn him five more
years of NBA paychecks and springtime runs. His most oft-utilized sleight—a
thespianic behind-the-arc pump fake—resulted in a scar and a fist-sized flesh
knot in the span of a week earlier this year. He responded to the latter by
lifting a helmet from the Rangers’ locker room and wearing it during halftime
shoot-around—a kid’s reaction to the pitfalls of a kid’s game, enacted by a
player more closely removed from his first Social Security check than many
of his peers are from their hospital basinets. Viewers and pundits crack wise
about old man moves, but their laughter, to borrow from Vonnegut, is
conducted purely in self-defense.

And Kidd genuinely seems to be enjoying himself, with a level of throwback
production to match. If the season ended today, his 17.7 player efficiency
rating (PER) would be his best in five seasons. He’s hitting at 44% from deep,
one the better marks in the league and the best of his career. That .187 win
shares per-48 would be his highest mark since Bill Clinton was President, and
second-highest of his career. The season doesn’t end today, of course, and
Kidd will have plenty of time to regress and tire and wonder if he really wants
to spend the next few years getting his head caved in by Andre Drummond.
For the moment, though, he is playing alarmingly and dazzlingly Jason Kidd-
like basketball.

It was just a few months ago, and just a few weeks after signing with the
Knicks, that Kidd was been taken into police custody after getting snockered
in the Hamptons and running his white, NBA-issue Cadillac Escalade straight
into, wait for it, a (****ing) Cablevision telephone pole. No one was hurt, and
Kidd was eventually released on his own recognizance. Rather than a public
apology, all we received—NBA viewers, Knick fans, anyone who unknowingly
shared those narrow roads with a blind-drunk basketball player that night—
was a cynical, course-par press release stating, in so many words, “My B,
y’all.”

Three years and $9 million for a guy already settled into a post-retirement
cocktail haze? To mentor Jeremy Lin on what, exactly, the fine points of power
-guzzling Manhattans? But then the Knicks brought back Raymond Felton and
Lin was cut loose and the incredulous rhetorical questions raised an octave:
here was a backcourt with an eating problem and a drinking problem. Could we
camp out in a Coleman tent for season tickets, or do we just have to keep
fingering “refresh” on our iPhones? What had seemed a savvy and relatively
low-cost signing looked abhorrent enough for Knick fans to wonder whether a
Phantom-masked Isiah might be pulling strings in a Quaalude haze from a
deep Garden bunker.

But it wasn’t just this most recent, eminently stupid offense, committed before
the ink on one of the most lucrative assistant player-coaching gigs in NBA
history had soaked through James Dolan’s puffin skin paper. For Kidd’s is a past
equal parts statistically quantum and personally checkered; as generous and
giddily improvisational as he is on the court, Kidd has mostly been kind of a
loutish wreck off of it...CONTINUE READING AT THE CLASSICAL

Re: 2/20/2013 Game Thread #54: Pacers Vs. Knicks

I am because that means I can watch it on league pass broadband instead of standard definition basic cable.

I can't figure my broadband out, it buffers every 5 seconds and my connection is certainly not being maxed out. I've installed the octoshape plugin, but it did nothing for me. It looked more like a virus than anything. Luckily the DirecTV guy just came out and hooked up the dish at my new place.

Re: 2/20/2013 Game Thread #54: Pacers Vs. Knicks

I can't figure my broadband out, it buffers every 5 seconds and my connection is certainly not being maxed out. I've installed the octoshape plugin, but it did nothing for me. It looked more like a virus than anything. Luckily the DirecTV guy just came out and hooked up the dish at my new place.

Are you sure octoshape isn't disabled or anything? Have you tried another browser? Mine works great with octoshape.

"Danny Granger is one of the top players in the league. To move Danny, you better get a lot back." - Larry Bird

Re: 2/20/2013 Game Thread #54: Pacers Vs. Knicks

I can't figure my broadband out, it buffers every 5 seconds and my connection is certainly not being maxed out. I've installed the octoshape plugin, but it did nothing for me. It looked more like a virus than anything. Luckily the DirecTV guy just came out and hooked up the dish at my new place.

Octoshape is pretty sketchy software... it basically enables peer to peer upload/download to provide additional bandwidth. So basically you are paying for league pass, their servers should be providing nice smooth video, but instead you are getting some of your video from Kemo and they are eating your upload. I personally refuse to install it, and won't be paying for league pass in the future.